GB2049748A which is incorporated herein by reference describes a skeining device comprising retaining members located adjacent the path of wire through the machine. A shuttle member carryies a wire guide in the form of an eye, and moves the wire guide around a closed loop path surrounding the retaining members to retain the wire on the members to multiplex the wire. A drive reciprocates the shuttle member along a rectilinear path substantially parallel to the path of the wire through the device and reciprocates the wire guide laterally of of the wire path to follow the closed loop path around the retaining members. One of the retaining members is rotated to twist the multiplexed wire to form the skein. The rotatable retaining member is in the form of a hook, and is returned to a correct orientation at the conclusion of rotation by a positioning motor. The skein is released by stripping it from the other retaining member. A proximity switch stops the shuttle drive when the shuttle member is clear of the multiplexed wire and simultaneously starts the rotation of the rotatable retaining member. Wire is drawn rapidly through the wire guide when a coil or the like is being wound, i.e. when skeining is not being carried out. In practice the tortuous path through the guide tends to have a detrimental effect on the outer surface of the wire and can introduce strains due to the sudden opposite bending caused as the wire passes through the guide. Ideally, the wire should pass through the guide without rubbing on the guide at all when coil winding is taking place. It has already been proposed to arrange for the guide to be rotateable for straight through feeding to achieve the desired effect. During skeining however, the wire will bear on the guide as the guide loops it around the retaining members.
In any event, whenever a fine gauge wire is used for coil winding, the shuttle member must be driven at a slower speed otherwise the wire will tend to break. Similarly, a still slower shuttle speed is required to prevent breakages during skeining of lower quality wire. These factors lead to a much increased skeining time in practice, and consequently to significant slowing down of the overall coil winding and skeining operations.
It is an object of the invention to reduce this problem.